1. --
Lanie LeBlanc OP
2. --
Carol & Dennis Keller
3. --
Brian Gleeson CP
4. --
5. --(Your
reflection can be here!)
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1.
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Sun. 33 C
Both the first and second readings about the end times
might well be descriptions of soon-to-be current events.
Though not so, couldn't you visualize the headlines:
Disaster is imminent!!!!! These readings are meant to help
us reflect on how better to live our lives in hope so that
when the final days or our own final day on earth do/does
arrive, we won't be in such a panic.
I have taken to avoid too much screen time and print
media these days because, as my grand daughter says, "all
the news seems so bad." She is just 11 and only gets to see
reasonable snippets!! It is hard not to keep up, at least
minimally, however, in order to stay involved and care about
ourselves and those we love.
So what do we do? Hopeful prayer the answer! In the first
reading, we are told " for you who fear my name, there will
arise the sun of justice with its healing rays." In the
meantime, healing rays can be found sitting before the
Blessed Sacrament.
Life is so busy, we say. Sure, but the following by "belovegivelove.com"
caught my eye when I was ironically on line a little too
long: "You say you don't have time for Me, but yet, you keep
on scrolling. God". Now instead of one last look online
before I turn my phone off at night, I make my "one last" be
another prayer.
In the Gospel selection according to Luke, we hear/read:
"By your perseverance you will secure your lives." What holy
things will help us to persevere? Lord, please be with us
and guide us!
Blessings,
Dr. Lanie
LeBlanc OP
Southern
Dominican Laity
lanie@leblanc.one
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Thirty Third Sunday of Ordered Time November
17, 2019
Malachi 3:19-20; Responsorial Psalm 98; 2nd
Thessalians 3:7-12; Gospel Acclamation Luke 21:28; Luke
21:5-19
The readings this Sunday come as a sort of final warning.
Malachi pulls no punches. Those who have chosen to live
their gift of life harming others and the earth will
disappear without a trace. Those whose lives are centered on
themselves in self-pride that considers no one their equal
will face the truth of their lives. There is nothing, no
fruit produced by their lives and they are without roots or
branches. Their gift of life has been wasted. They are
stubble in a harvested field. It is burned off to clear the
field for the next planting. In the process, weeds and
harmful insects are also cleared. The Malachi reading is
only two verses but should grab our attention and turn us
toward an evaluation of how we’ve lived the year we’re going
to finish with next Sunday’s liturgy. Has our year been a
waste? What growth of spirit can we look to as the fruit
we’ve produced this past year? Is our granary full of the
fruit of a life well-lived?
The gospel looks at the finality of life from a different
perspective. Jesus warns us that there will always be tumult
and nation fighting nation. There will be natural cataclysms
that shake our confidence in the solidity of nature. Storms,
earthquakes, floods, and wild fires will come. Even the
great temple reconstructed by King Herod will be leveled.
That did happen in 70 when the Romans put down an
insurrection.
The warning applies to our day as well. We are foolish if
we put our trust and our hope in the workings of men. It
seems humanity is always at war with itself. It seems that
there are always those who would tear up "paradise and make
it a parking lot." The warning tells us not to fear all
these terrors. Those who follow in the way He has shown us
will be persecuted. Lies will be presented as truth. Discord
as development. Hatred as love. Thieves will be spoken of as
honest men. Adulterers as upstanding citizens. Mammon will
be erected as the god who controls everyone’s fate. And
lives of children – born and unborn – as without dignity,
worth, or rights. Beauty will be soiled by exploitation. And
all life will be valued by wealth that is the sacrament of
consumption.
Both the reading from Malachi and from Luke’s Gospel
point out of human life. We come to trust nature only to
suddenly be caught by the horror of terrible storms or of
sudden and devastating shifts of tectonic plates. We become
complacent in the belief that our national constitutions are
permanent and unshakeable. We trust our political and
religious leaders. Yet were we to pay attention to our
studies of world history we’d realize the downfalls of many
grand and apparently permanent empires occurred at the hands
of that leadership. The Assyrian empire, the Egyptian
empire, the Babylonian empire, the Persian empire, the Greek
empire and the Roman empire have all failed. Each empire
gave way to succeeding empires. Each succumbed to corruption
in the ranks of leadership. How terrible was the fall of the
great Roman Empire whose legions protected the empire from
the raids and ravaging of Barbarians! Yet even the great
empire of Rome collapsed under the weight of its own
corruption. The Goths, the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the
Vandals, and finally the Huns overran those legions which
lost its discipline and became made up of mercenaries. The
fragility of human institutions is historically victimized
by corruption. Even our two thousand year old church has
been shaken by financial and managerial corruption and
disturbingly by child abuse and the cover-up of that abuse
by the hierarchy.
Yet the message of Jesus is that death and decline is not
the end of his mission. As followers of Jesus we find our
salvation in faith in his message and the outpouring of the
love of God for us. In this Sunday’s gospel, Jesus insists
that he will be with us through all these terrors and waves
of corruption. This presence does not free us from resisting
what is evil. This presence of Jesus and the Spirit assist
us as we work to bring about the Kingdom of God here and
now. Jesus warns us this week – as does Malachi – that we
are more than what happens to us. We have within us the
presence of Jesus and the Spirit to assist us and to help us
endure the test.
This is a time to reconsider what is important. This is a
time to review our situation and consider what we hold as
precious. This is the time to wash away what our social,
political, and economic culture has done and does to soil
and rob our characters of its dignity and worth. This is the
time to put aside the trappings of evil and reach into the
depths of our person and polish up the image of God we
reflect. It is time to clean that mirror that is our spirits
and reflect yet again the light of the living God to a world
in great need. It is time to establish the Kingdom of Heaven
once again in truth, in hope, in faith, and in love and
appreciation for all we’ve been given.
Next Sunday – we celebrate the Kingdom brought by the Son
of God.
Carol &
Dennis Keller
dkeller002@nc.rr.com
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PERSEVERING IN FAITH, TRUST, AND LOVE: 33RD SUNDAY
C
Jesus is speaking about the future. What his first
listeners hear him saying is grim stuff – real doom and
gloom. As we listen in to what he says we must ask ourselves
how much of his message is meant for us too. Where is the
hope in what he says? Is there any hope in what he says?
Jesus is responding to a group from the Fine Art Society
of Jerusalem discussing the beauty of the Temple building.
They are entranced by the splendour of the edifice and the
magnificence of its decorations. But Jesus responds to their
pride about the Temple with thundering words. He says that
Jerusalem is heading for total destruction and the rest of
the world for disaster. This is just what happened to
Jerusalem with one exception. When the Roman general Titus
in the year 70 destroyed the city and the Temple, he ordered
that a wall should be left standing for the Jewish people to
mourn the loss of their sacred site. That ‘Wailing Wall’ is
still there.
The first disaster for the wider world that Jesus warns
against is the arrival on the scene of deceivers. They make
out that they are saviours, and pretend to know the ultimate
secret – when will the world end? Out of sheer fear some
people believe them.
It is more difficult to follow the advice of Jesus not to
be frightened by wars and revolutions. In a world with
stockpiles of nuclear weapons, surely it’s a challenge not
to be frightened by the sheer idiocy of some unpredictable
leader who wants to launch a nuclear strike which would wipe
out a swathe of cities and regions. In the time of Jesus,
wars and battles were limited by the weapons available.
Today we are feeling threatened with ‘weapons of mass
destruction’. They are so lethal that they could end up
destroying the whole earth, our shared home.
Jesus goes on to mention earthquakes, plagues and
famines. For thousands of people these are still regular
features of life and the causes of indescribable suffering.
We cannot measure the extent of human loss on the Richter
scale. For all the advances in science and medicine, there
are still epidemics of incurable diseases. With the globe
getting warmer and warmer, there are more famines than ever
before, and there are still thousands and thousands of
people going hungry or starving to death. For millions of
people such disasters do mean the end, even though they
don’t mean the end of the entire world.
Jesus adds that his followers will be persecuted for
their beliefs. In fact he never suggests that following him
will be painless and bloodless. He suggests rather that
their sufferings will give his followers an opportunity to
witness to their faith and trust in him. Down the centuries
Christians have revered the memory and prayers of those men
and women who have valued their faith more than life itself,
and who have refused to change their commitment to Christ
and the Christian way of life for the sake of their own
survival. They have lived the truth of the words of Jesus.
They have also lived the pattern of his life, a life that
ended with his cruel passion and death.
The last item on the list of Jesus’ warnings is betrayal.
He warns his followers that they cannot always count on
their own families to understand them and support them in
their commitment to Christ. This really does sometimes
happen. On becoming Christians particular people are shown
the door by their very own families, who never speak to them
again, and have nothing more to do with them. For their
becoming Christians, ever afterwards they are treated like
orphans. Paying this price for their relationship with
Christ, then, is a very high price and an extremely painful
one.
On coming to the end of this list of possible disasters
for persevering in faith, surely we feel that it’s time to
look for comfort and reassurance. There is comfort in the
fact that Jesus has told us before it happens that living
our faith in him will at times be very painful. Living among
people who do not believe in God, and living among those who
sneer and jeer at those who do, is hard to take. It takes
much courage to persevere, and the courage that we need to
stay faithful is a grace from God, a real blessing.
A poet wanting to portray the blindness of society to the
questions that confront us used this image: -
We picnic at the edge of the precipice
With our backs to the abyss.
Jesus asks us to face the abyss, but face it with faith.
Many good people lose their faith when they see the
amount of evil and suffering in the world. They cannot
observe the pointless suffering of so many and still believe
in a God who cares. They cannot look into the eyes of a
starving child e.g. and still praise God. They know that no
one chooses to die from famine. They know that no one wants
to be blown up by a stray bomb or a drone, and yet these
things keep happening.
Their questions are our questions too. There are no ready
answers to such questions. There are times when all our
faith can do is to hang on, to endure. That is what Jesus
says in the gospel today. He has no quick answers either. He
just calls on his followers to endure, in spite of all the
horror and all the suffering that may come their way.
If we had the answers, our faith wouldn’t have to endure.
But because the questions are still with us, still
unanswered, still unresolved, let us pray for ourselves and
one another, for a faith that endures, a faith that
perseveres, and a faith that lasts till the very end of the
dark night!
"Brian
Gleeson CP" <bgleesoncp@gmail.com>
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